A few years ago, Hydro-Québec’s IT (information technology) services wanted to abolish the Info-pannes telephone line, allowing subscribers to report a breakdown or find out when power is expected to return. The argument was that the information was also available on the web, and that “everyone has a cell phone with data”. Employees raised the fallacy of this argument, and the line ultimately stood. Following last week’s ice storm, several subscribers noticed that the cellular network had gone down in their area, depriving them of Internet access. Also, the Hydro-Quebec website, long before the Russian attacks, was often saturated and unresponsive on those days. As for the mobile application, in addition to suffering the same problems, it only supports recent phones. On the other hand, the good old wired copper telephone lines continued to work. In its planned effort to improve the resilience of the network, prudence dictates that Hydro-Québec not discard technological solutions that are certainly older, but already existing and less vulnerable.
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